REVIVAL OF SLAVERY

Southland Times, Issue 18945, 19 May 1923, Page 8

REVIVAL OF SLAVERY

WHOLESALE MARKETING IN ABYSSINIA. The British and French Governments are giving serious consideration to the revival of slavery and traffic ifi human beings, regarding which the League of Nations has promised to take action next September, says a Reuter message in the Manchester Guardian. Thousands of slaves are apparently being marketed in Abyssinia. The French Government has discovered that monthly shipments of slaves are passing through the port of Tadjourah, in Somaliland, from which traffic the local Sultan derives a fee of a dollar per head on each slave shipped to Arabia. Further south, on the East Coast of Africa, the French local authorities have been trying to stop convoys of slaves between Madagascar and the mainland of Africa, and it is stated that more than 300 slaves have been carried across during the last four months, whilst British naval units are endeavouring to deal with the situation in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf with some good results.

British naval units have recently been shelling the villages of the Yalsade, on the coast of Oman, in connection with slaverunning operations, and a convoy of slaves recently discovered by them proceeding from French Somaliland was believed to have come from Abyssinia. In the case of the slave traffic on the Oman coast it is understood that the slaves had been obtained > Persia and Baluchistan.